


Dream A Little Dream

by ea-stofnar (SinsofYouth)



Series: Paper Moon [1]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Characters Falling Out Of Love, Established Relationship, Fucking Without Love, M/M, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-18
Updated: 2015-08-18
Packaged: 2018-04-15 08:44:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4600278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SinsofYouth/pseuds/ea-stofnar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Merlin doesn’t watch me as I dress anymore. He used to. We would sometimes take hours to leave the water’s edge, just drinking one another in, cataloging each separate strand of hair, each new scar. I don’t remember when he stopped.<br/>Maybe it was around the same time I started watching him out of the corners of my eyes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dream A Little Dream

Dream A Little Dream

 

I hate waking up, even more than I hate going to sleep. At least when I sleep I dream of him.

All I have of him when I’m awake is a lie. It’s short and it’s simple and I hold him when we’re done. Pretending I can't remember when this was real. 

But that’s the lie.

There’s nothing left of us anymore.

I sink into his heat and cling to the memories of the nights we had, where the world was ripe and love and togetherness was all we knew. When we were too young to understand that true love can't conquer everything.

It’s gone now, that oneness. I suppose that’s what happens when you haven’t talked to someone in almost four hundred years. That’s why I hate waking up; because every time I crawl out of that lake I realize I’ve fallen a little farther behind, a little more out of date; a little farther away from him.

We used to talk. We would try and catch up, to fill in the decades we were missing from each other’s lives. He would tell me a joke he’d been told fifty years ago, how the country had split, who was in power, what useless fool of a monarch or a Prime Minister or a general I had to save this time. We would mostly talk about him, what he’d done, where he’d gone, what he’d seen. Hours we would just lie in bed, curled together, sharing the warmth we missed, the heat we knew would be stolen again too soon.

I don’t really remember when we stopped. After a while we just realized we were saying the same things. He missed me. He loved me. He saw things that reminded him of Morgana, or Lance, or me. He hated seeing the life we knew, the remnants of our life; crumble into moldering ruin until even the foundation stones were no more than dust on the wind. He’d say it like that sometimes too. Merlin could be endearingly eloquent when he wanted to.

I used to hold him tighter when he said things like that. I would whisper kisses over his ears and tell him that we would never end up like that. Nothing could get in the way of Merlin and Arthur, not even time. The last time I told him that, we were on a ship headed to Waterloo. I slept for three hundred years afterwards. When I woke up we didn’t even speak the same language anymore; literally. I was speaking Middle English while Merlin had slipped into the current dialect, adapted with the times. He was integrated, I was the freak. Our roles were so reversed. He was the King and I was the servant bumbling and stumbling about trying to do some good. But all the time I felt so much like a landed fish, flopping on the shore, starving for oxygen.

I was so lost. And the ages chipped away the last bit of land I had left to cling to: Merlin.

I knew it the first time I met him, a scrawny boy with a scarf fetish. I didn’t always like it, but I learned to appreciate it. Eventually, I took it for granted. But I didn't realize, not until it was already well past too late. And then it was all I could do to watch us as we drifted; continents moving painfully slow, inexorably constant. Each time I woke, we were a little farther apart. And I didn’t know how to stop it.

I think somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew I couldn’t. But I wanted to believe I could. I’m Arthur Pendragon after all: King of Camelot, Savior of the World, the Once and bloody Future King; I can fix anything.

Except this…us...we, can’t be fixed by swinging a sword around and beating the big bad guy. We can't because I’m the villain in all this. I was so busy saving the world, I didn’t see I was losing the one good thing I had left in it.

It’s only been two hundred years this time. But it might as well be eternity for all I recognize of London’s sprawling conurbation when I emerge from the depths.

I open my eyes, water rushes up to meet my senses. It’s the same every time. I expel the breath I’ve been holding for decades as my body is pulled towards the lakes’ surface. This is a ritual I recognize, a pattern I’ve been reliving for eons. I know Merlin will be waiting for me when I emerge just as I know he won’t be the Merlin I’ve been dreaming about for the last two hundred years. Not really. Not anymore.

My head breaks the surface first, the last rays of sunlight kissing my face. I stride to shore, to the bank where Merlin is waiting for me. He’s wearing those funny clothes, he told me what they were called the last time I was awake, but I don’t remember the name. Blue pants and a simple shirt. My armor clanks and clicks as my feet hit the bank. I’m not wet. I never am, yet I feel waterlogged each time I drag myself up from the grimy bilge.

I look up at Merlin. We stare at one another, our eyes searching for words we cannot find in each other.

He kneels down before I can open my mouth, pulling the pack off his back. He hands me clothing and the moment is gone. He has filled the space with action, with ritual and habit.

He helps me peel out of my armor. This is familiar. It’s part of the waking up. If I close my eyes I can almost imagine we’re back in my rooms, back in Camelot. But too many things are different. His fingers no longer linger, no longer take time or care. We both know I should not be caught looking like this. It would beg questions neither of us are willing to answer.

The undressing takes more and less time than I want it to. The wind caresses my back and I shiver. The clothing Merlin has brought is warm though; homely and cotton, but warm. I’ve stopped commenting on the quality of clothing. I’m hardly a King anymore, just of my little pond. I should be grateful I get clothing at all.

Merlin doesn’t watch me as I dress anymore. He used to. We would sometimes take hours to leave the water’s edge, just drinking in one another; cataloging each separate strand of hair, each new scar. I don’t remember when he stopped.

Maybe it was around the same time I started watching him out of the corners of my eyes.

He moves differently when I'm not watching. His body grows tense, his shoulders hunch, dragging his concrete feet. I can no longer recognize him. He becomes a new Merlin, one I had no hope of understanding, no matter how long I watch him.

I shove my feet in a pair of sandals and we are walking out of the woods. 

The trip to Merlin’s apartment is a whirl of lights and fast vehicles and loud noises I cannot comprehend. Magic, it seems, is everywhere in this new century. But no one calls it that. They call it technology. This too is over both too quickly and far slower than I wish it to be.

The apartment itself is small and neat and colorless. Merlin has brought nothing of himself to this whitewashed cranny in which he sleeps. The walls are bare of both paint and decoration. The carpet is threadbare and I can see patches of the floorboards where it’s been worn through.

Merlin tells me it’s best to keep my shoes on, but offers no further explanation. He would have once, before destiny turned him into a cold, self-contained man.

I curl my toes in the borrowed shoes and follow his advice.

He’s moving around his small kitchen with easy, practiced movements, so unlike the bumbling Manservant I know…knew. Before I can offer to help he’s spooning something warm and yellow onto two plates and we’re sitting down at his battered fold out card table. I’m shoveling the overcooked pasta into my mouth, but it’s all habit. The food could taste of ash and soot, but I eat because my body demands it after so long asleep. Like so much of my existence now, this is instinctual, guided by memory and tradition. That’s all I have left.

Merlin is speaking. He’s telling me all the things I need to know about the evil which must be defeated.

I realize in that moment that I no longer want to listen. I want to eat my meal of ash and soot without having to think about saving the world again, about what will happen after I fulfill destiny, about when I’ll have to say goodbye to Merlin again, this Merlin, the shadow of the one I dream about, the one that still holds a little warmth while I fuck him.

Merlin clears his throat and I glance up, a little guilty for being caught ignoring him. But he doesn’t look angry or disappointed. Merlin’s eyes, the once brilliant crystal blue is dim and grey with apathy. He sighs and for an instant I think he’s going to say something. But instead he pushes his plate aside and reaches for me.

Our lips meet and I feel what I have always felt: lust, raw desire. It’s one of the few facets of us I have left. But it’s only a flicker of the fire we once knew. This Merlin is the illusion of everything I want. He is the sharp edge I take to my skin when need to ease the agony in my soul.

Understanding what he is, what I'm doing. I know that that I'll hate myself more after I've done this, but I cannot turn him away.

I wish, as our tongues slid together, that I had the strength to push him away, to explain why I cannot use him this way, how unfair to both of us it is. I long, as I fist a hand in his hair, to make him listen while I pour out every putrid insecurity I have. I yearn, as his fingers curl around my biceps, to tell him I don’t want his body. I don't want to fuck a memory. All I want is my Merlin back.

But he’s in my lap, pulling the soft shirt from my shoulders as his firmness presses into my hip and I know I won’t say anything this time either. I’m swept up by the passion of him in my arms the siren song of illusion. I can pretend for a moment we aren’t hopelessly broken.

His skin is so pale. I touch every inch I can while he is wrapped around me, constantly moving, but he makes no sound. I wonder if he has seen much sun in the last few hundred years, but those thoughts are quickly swept away by the sensual motion of this Merlin’s hips.

I think that if we keep it up I will fuck him in this chair, the one that’s creaking with Merlin’s every twist and shimmy. But before I do more than touch at the rough waistline of his rough trousers, Merlin is climbing off of my lap, tugging me wordlessly down a narrow hallway. 

We are on the bed before I even have a chance to miss his skin, clamoring to remove the last of our clothing. I’m trying not to think about how easy this is as I feel a cold tube being pressed into my palm. I realize how little I’m actually paying attention to him, to his reactions. I already know them all by heart. And suddenly I’m trying not to wonder if he’s faking all of his motions and reactions, or if it is possible to become so used to a person you just tune them out. Like a song you've heard a million times.

Or a person you've fucked a few hundred...

I’m trying not to remember that this is the only thing we do anymore. I’m trying not to remember that all of this is a lie.

I slip inside him, maybe before he’s ready. I don’t know. He moans and his fingers wrap around my arms just like they do every time, so I have no way of knowing for sure if I've hurt him.

I begin moving, his heat is comforting, almost enough for me to lose myself in. But I can't close my eyes because I’ve caught his. That’s when I realize we’re face to face. And maybe that's a stupid thing to realize when you've got your dick in someone's ass, but it feels like a revelation.

We haven’t fucked like this in nearly a millennia: before we started falling apart.

He’s on his back and I’m inside him, staring into his eyes, eyes that I can almost imagine are bright and filled with something that isn't apathy.

Without even realizing it, my hips have slowed to a gentle wave. I realize I’m making love to him and want to cry and punch myself in equal measure.

But the brightness in Merlin’s eyes doesn’t diminish. I want to believe more than anything it's not a trick; the illusion of a desperate mind. We are looking, really looking at one another for the first time since I’ve woken up. We are staring, seeing as I move gently inside of him.

Suddenly I'm hungry for him, to see everything, to drink him in. My eyes are roving hungrily, searching out everything part of him, enjoying for the simple pleasure of being allowed. All the scars and shadows, dips and hollows, a tattoo I don’t recognize, in a language I don't understand. His body is the body of a stranger.

A stranger. Not Merlin; my Merlin.

And just like that I'm cut loose, floating free with the horrible truth. 

I've fallen for my own lie. 

For a moment I believed this was my Merlin, the one I dream about. I wanted so badly to believe he was in there, waiting for a sign, a signal it was okay to come out. But he isn't that Merlin. Not anymore.

My eyes journey back to his, over the pale path of foreign skin. And just as suddenly the fire is gone, the brightness. Maybe it was never there.

And all I want now is to be finished. I don’t want this farce anymore. I don’t want to linger here with him.

I’m going hard again, my hips pistoning, skin slapping on skin. He isn’t looking at me anymore. He’s turned his face to the side, an arm flung across his eyes.

I close mine and press on. It’s wonderful and horrible and all at once I’m coming inside of him, pushing aside the guilt of using another human being. Of betraying my Merlin with this man who wears his face.

I try and fall back on tradition, to pull him into my arms so we can pretend to sleep, but he is already rolling away, stumbling out of the room.

I hear the door to his bedroom slam and I’m left alone on the narrow bed with nothing but the quickly cooling heat from his body.

I want to call out, to tell him to stop and come back, that I love him, that I’ll always love him. But I know this love isn't for him and pretending is how we got into this mess. What I really want is to end this charade, this un-life I must spend with him for the rest of time. I no longer want to be Arthur. But I know such wishing is fruitless.

In the end I will be called back to the lake. The waters will close over my head, will draw me back down to the depths and I will sleep.

Because it is my destiny to live forever even while I dream of living once.

I close my eyes, allowing the transient peace of sleep to slip it's noose over my neck.

I’ll wake soon. Merlin will come back, this new Merlin I don’t know. He will show me what I have to do. He will guide me. I will win. I always win. And then I will go back to the lake, the place I hate...and the place I love.

Because when I am in the lake, that is when I get to see my Merlin; the one who still loves me.

He is a dream.

But he’s all I have left.

**Author's Note:**

> This work is my own and I make no profit from it. I'm also my own editor, all mistakes are my own. Thanks for reading.


End file.
